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OK. So this is Camera Tape No 81, DAT Tape No 81. The camera starts
on Time Code 07031214. So a new DAT, new camera. We’re
interviewing Edith McFarlane at her home in Cleveland, in Queensland.
It’s the 17th May 2002. And this is the second DAT and BETA SX.
OK. So Edith, in the photos that Edith knew – oh no, you were going to tell
me about the Aboriginal funeral.
Oh yes. When Emily – when Elsie’s mother died, Emily died ah she was to
buried the next day and apparently they all gathered for the – for the funeral
procession and the husband was led in the front of the procession with a bag
over his head and it came right down so he could see nothing at all. Now I
don’t know what that was for. I couldn’t get details from any of the black
women. And then she was, the body was taken to one of the stony hills well
out of flood water reach and buried there. And a big circle was cleared all
round the grave site and I asked them why and they said next morning,
somebody would go up and see what animal or bird had first passed over that
cleared spot and that is what Emily would become. Emily’s spirit would
become. Now they, they put no markers round. No grave um fence around it
as they had in old days. There were some very, very old grave sites there and
the timber was so old that it was beginning to rot, but where they had buried
people, they had put a little fence around it. And those were Aboriginal
graves. But they did nothing like that for Emily.
Who was Emily and what had happened to her?
Ah, Emily helped around the house – not a great deal, but she did do some
work round the house. I mean that was the first year I was there so I really
hadn’t seen very much of her. And she died when the baby was born. The
baby lived and was looked after by the other women but that is why she died.
She was only very little. A little woman and never appeared to me when I did
see her, as being a very strong one. Most of them were quite – fairly well
developed, strong women.
And did Emily have a second name? Like did you think –
No. I didn’t ever hear any second names for any of them. We had Emily and
Ada. Oh, I can’t remember. Ada was the wife of the King, Paddy. I can’t
remember the other names. Some of them were not originally from a tribe
there. They had come – one came from Cordillo Downs. Some of them came
down from Tanbar when the manager had taken away some of – in about
1925, had taken some of them up to the little township of Windorah promising
blankets to them, but when he got there, he put them on the mail truck and sent
them down to the Mission and they did not like going to the Mission. Well
word got back to them before the manager. They had a remarkable way of
communicating and although it was 70 miles from Tanbar to the township, the
others knew before the manager came back that the blacks were not coming
back with him. So they packed up their few little bits and pieces and they
walked down to Durham and that was in the midst of a howling drought. And
one of them had a little baby which I think may have died. That was a half
caste woman that had that baby. And there was one very old woman who was
still at Durham when I went there. There was – this must have happened not
all that long before I went there, so the day that Mr McCullagh took me past
the camp to show me what their camp was like, this very very old lady came
out to talk to us in pidgin English, and I said she must very old. I wonder if
she would remember when Burke and Wills went through this country? And
he said to her, how long since you’ve been piccaninny? And she laughed a
real cackle of a laugh. And she patted her tummy and she said ‘Bell me got in
piccaninny’. Bell is ‘no’ meaning that she wasn’t pregnant. It would’ve been
many many years since she’d – since she would have ever have been pregnant.
But I would say that she was perhaps 80 or 90 years old. Very old – withered
old soul. But she, she had a sense of humour still. Well it seemed to us she
did have.
Now Edith, the next thing I’m going to ask you about isn’t pleasant but I’d
like to know. I’ve got – you know who Meston(?) was? He was the protector.
Who?
Harold Meston. He was the –
Oh yes. I’ve heard the name.
Anyway, I’ve got letters written by a Mr Fisher who was a shearer at Durham
Downs in the late 1890s and he describes pretty horrific sexual abuse of
Aboriginal women. Three classes of prostitute. You know, the stud gins for
the managers and then the middle – the middle class of prostitutes and then the
prostitutes on the creek. Do you believe that story and –
I do.
What do you know about that?
That’s why there are – were so many half-castes. You see there are a lot of
half-caste people and there are still a lot of them living. They are half-caste.
And um I think it was because of the lack of white women out there. In this
book of Flynn’s, one of the padres was out in – before, really before Flynn got
stuck into this idea of ah of medical help out there. One of them mentions that
out on the properties, he’d go on his camels and go round these big distances
and he would come to places where there were Aboriginal woman, no white
women. But there were children. And as everything is, these men, because
they hadn’t wives, they hadn’t anybody – anybody, white women, they just
indulged in sexual behaviour with the black women. And I guess to a certain
extent,that still might happen too. I don’t know. I’ve been away from it for so
long but we had – at Tanbar we had no – no ah Aboriginal, either black – oh
we had a half-caste man at one stage. Um – at Morestone where I was first
married, we had three black women and they each had a black husband and as
far as I know, there was no intermingling with the white men at all. Um, even
if they came into the head station. I think they just went to their own quarters
and they never bothered about the black women, as far as I know. I mean it
could’ve happened and I wouldn’t have heard.
So was there a lot of talk about that earlier history of Durham? Would
anybody have talked to you about that time?
No. No. No. I knew very little about early Durham, until we were living at
Tanbar and that – the only thing we heard then was from read from an old
letter that my husband found in which he refers to the number of sheep and the
number of cattle that were carried on Durham when they first went there and
the place was a sea of grass and they thought this is wonderful you see. A
wonderful place for it. And they put about um 50,000 sheep I think it was and
many many thousand head of cattle and horses. A lot of horses of course to do
the work. Because a drought came and everything went. Everything went.
And they lost practically all the stock because there was no – no feed for them.
And that was – that’s the only thing I knew about Durham in the early days.
You mentioned in your book that there was some mud hut that had been to
protect women and children. Do you want to just describe that and the cellar?
Was there ever a sense that white people at Durham had once been afraid of
Aboriginal people?
Oh they were! Um, that – that, that was the home that was built about half
way between Nockatunga and Durham there was a property that had an old
mud house and they had um they had slips like this in the windows for
shooting through because there were wild, you know, un – uncivilized people
out there in the bush, coming in, and they did have a lot of trouble. At
Durham they had an underground – we used it as a cellar, and for a while, for
quite a while until Mr McCullagh built a new kitchen, we used to cook down
there. Ah and it had a – it was just excavated and it had a – I don’t know what
sort of a roof it had on it. A curved roof. And it would hardly have been
curved iron in those days. But it would’ve dated back to the early days – of
their first days there. And it was a shelter for women if they were attacked by
the wild natives. And there were quite a lot of cases, and if you’ve read um
books about the country between ah Quilpie and the border – the Queensland
border, ah Thylungra um or people –Wellshot Downs, they had a lot of
trouble, and John Costello took up Thylungra but he was never satisfied to
stay somewhere. He’d get that fixed and then he had to go on and find
something else, so when he went away, he would leave his wife with lots of,
lots of rifles. And the place was fairly secure, but there were a lot of – quite a
lot of wild natives there, and I mean, they said why can’t we come and kill the
sheep or the cattle, whichever? Because the white man is killing our food
supplies. They were killing kangaroos and any other wild life to get rid of it
so that the feed was left for the sheep or the cattle, whichever they were
running. And it’s understandable that – I mean if somebody came into your
home and started knocking things about, you would feel, except that we are
supposed to be civilized anyway, you would feel like retaliating, and that’s all
it was. They were uneducated. They were really really wild tribes and
naturally, when somebody killed off their supplies, they would retaliate by
killing out of the white man’s supplies. So I – all my sympathy is with the
black people I’m afraid. I just don’t sympathise with the white man. It was
terrible. Terrible to see people being shot and killed with spears but it was
understandable.
Trish, I’m just going to change batteries.
OK.
I mean I know particularly Queensland because I spent so much time in
western Queensland, but once they crossed the mountains and began to realise
all these acres and millions and millions of square miles of country, that had
only wild game on it, and they could visualise putting either sheep or cattle
and in some cases both on a property, but as a general rule they discovered
that it was better for – one might be better for sheep and another one might be
better for cattle. And that’s what they found at Durham, that sheep were no
good in that country. Ah, it was – it was typically cattle country. Ah,
Arrabury next door to – next door to Tanbar and I suppose in a way next door
to Durham, ran sheep for many many years, but then the dingoes became very
numerous and they were losing so much in the way of sheep and Cordillo
Downs was the same. They ran sheep for many many years because it was
good sheep country. But there are no sheep properties out there as far as I
know. Nappamerrie was a sheep – part of it was sheep. Part of it was cattle.
But I think none of them run sheep now and that mainly because of the dingo
population, and in spite of putting up fences to block the dingoes, they were
ways and ways of them getting through and it wasn’t a great success really.
So coming back then to the Aboriginal people you knew at Durham, did you
ever know a little girl called Elsie, and if so what can you tell me about Elsie?
Well there’s not a great deal I could tell you about her. She used to come to
the – come up to the house. Especially after her mother died, she would come
to the house and be bathed and put into a clean frock and she would play
around there, but about the only thing that I can remember that was
outstanding with her was watching her having a lesson in what is known as a
corroboree. And that was - to watch her standing upright and just trembling
ah from the shoulder right down to her feet. Not, not trembling in fright but a
tremble that she could produce and that was what these black women had been
teaching her. But I didn’t really see enough of her. Well, I was too busy
anyway to see a great deal of her, but I know, later, when she was older, she
had lessons with the little white girl when – when Jean started lessons, Elsie
went too. She was a pretty little girl. Curly hair. Um, she was – I think she
was a full blood black, not a half-caste child, as so many of them – people out
there were half-castes.
Who were Elsie’s parents?
Ah Emily, and as far as I know, Koora Jack was the father. Ah, it may not
have been. It may have been another one because they did change partners
from time to time. And another thing – it was interesting to watch at Durham,
was a fight between two of the women. Ah, one was a woman who had come
from Cordillo Downs some time before and the other was Ada, the wife of our
King – Paddy. And we heard a terrible commotion up at the camp, went to see
what it was all about. They had one waddy, you know, heavy stick between
them and the one that didn’t have the waddy would bend over, put her head
down. The other one would crack her right down the middle of her head.
Then she’d pass the waddy back to the other one and she’d bend over, so they
went on like this. Well, the bookkeeper was only quite a little fragile man.
The manager was away out in the stock camp and so the bookkeeper was the
only white man there and he decided he’d have to go and stop the camp – the
fight. And he went up there and managed to stop them. I think he was very
brave because he could easily have received a blow by accident. But when the
girls – these two women came down, they were streaming – streaming with
blood because their head, skull, right through, had been ripped open. Well,
Mrs McCullagh blamed one particular. She said she was the one that started
it. So she took her away and she bathed her head and she bound it up, but the
other one she said was – Ada she said, was the troublemaker and she wouldn’t
do anything for her. Well some days went past and Ada was one who used to
come round and sweep the bedrooms and ah I was in my room one day and
she came in and she said, holding her head, she said oh, narcoo(?), that -
narcoo was their word for me, meaning ‘girl’. Narcoo, my head hurts. And
she was nearly crying with the pain, and I said well you just go along and tell
Mrs and she’ll do something for you. So she did then, cleaned it all up, but
how – if that had happened to a strong white man, he would’ve died. I’m sure
no, no white man could have – certainly no white woman could have stood it.
But I - and I doubt very much that a white man could have stood such a
terrible terrible gash right down the middle of the skull.
In Edith New’s photo album there are all these pictures of that little baby.
Why do you think – I want you to – you’ve only said Elsie’s name once. I
want you to tell me her name again. Why do you think that little baby was so
sort of special in Edith’s album? Do you have any sense of that?
Because she was the only little baby – little baby there I guess at the time.
Um, she belonged to ah one of those that had, I think, one of those that had
walked down from – oh no, she couldn’t have been, because the one – one was
pregnant and lost her baby on the way and she was a half-caste. So possibly
ah Elsie’s mother had come down under great difficulty, got down there. But I
don’t really know for sure about that and why she was special. But she was
the only child there and so she was made quite a fuss of, not only by the black
people but by the white people. They just treated her as something very
special. And she was a dear little girl too. I didn’t have much to do with her
of course. I was too busy as I said before but she really was a dear little girl.
So there was a lot of Aboriginal women at Durham but hardly any babies. Is
that correct?
That’s right. Mmm. Most of them I think would have been – it was hard to
tell the age, but I think the majority of them would have been beyond the child
bearing stage. Ah, where – why I don’t know. The half-caste woman was
young enough. She had a – she did have a little baby while I was there. A
lovely child, but her husband was ah her husband was black but she was half-
caste. Um – and this little baby, ooh he used to – he was subject to fits. Long
before his walking stage and when he had a fit, they would rush down to Mrs
McCullagh with him. I will say that for her. She was very good if there was
anything wrong. Any accidents. She was very capable, and that’s, I suppose
because having grown up in the bush, she had become accustomed to helping
with things. Um – then one day he had one of these fits and ah the idea was
cold water and hot water, and Mrs McCullagh ran out of hot water and she
said to the bookkeeper, oh get me some more hot water. He went across to the
kitchen and came back. It was nearly boiling and they poured it over. He
didn’t – without feeling it first, she poured it over the child. He was
shockingly scalded, but he lived. Well then of course she had a lot more
treatment. Not only for fits but for scalding so he was coming every day for
dressings.
Do you think there’s a possibility that it was venereal disease stopping
Aboriginal women from having babies?
Well it could have been. It could have been that, because I know that they
were absolutely riddled with it. Well the ones that I had at, at um – I didn’t
know anything about venereal disease when I was at ah Durham. It was
extremely ignorant about a lot of things. But when I was at Morestone, we
had to rush one woman into the hospital one night in Camooweal and when
the doctor came out, he said if you have a baby, don’t let them touch anything.
She’s absolutely riddled with venereal disease. And I don’t know really what
was wrong with her. As I say, I was pretty ignorant about things and I don’t
really know just what was wrong with her that night. She came back to the
place eventually and ah I heard but they didn’t. There were three women
there. Two of them would still have been child-bearing age but they didn’t.
They were never pregnant. As far as I know, they were never pregnant.
Because they knew how to dispose of a baby if they didn’t want it. So that
they could’ve become pregnant and just got rid of it.
So who looked after Ada and the – Elsie and the other little baby after Emily
died, do you know?
They all took a turn at looking after her but she spent the day down at the
house and went back to the camp with the women at night. And they just
cared for her. They were all fond of her and they all looked after her. And
they would’ve looked after the – if, if the baby lived. I think the baby did live.
I can’t be sure about that one. It was too long ago.
How did Aboriginal people treat children in your experience?
They loved children. They really really loved children. Um – when we were
coming back from holiday once to go to Tanbar and I had – my three children
were – my three children came one on top of the other. I said they might as
well have been triplets, and I liked it that way because they were able to play
the same sort of games instead of having gaps in between them. But I – we
came down through Nockatunga and Ada was then working at Nockatunga
and she said oh narcoo, oh narcoo, and she counted in – I’ve forgotten their,
their words for 1, 2, 3. I’ll use the English words – 1 – 2 – 3. Oh narcoo. 1 –
2 – 3 using her word for the numbers. And she just thought the children were
wonderful. They really really do love children. Little children. And take
great care of them too. That - it was only at Durham really that I had anything
much to do with, with them and then the ones that I had, I had at Morestone
above Camooweal, some rather funny things happened there if I can put the
one in that amuses everybody. Um – the previous wife of the manager had
never thought to encourage them to be clean, nor the house. The house was a
mess. Cobwebs hanging. No ceiling in the top, cobwebs through. Just like
festooned for Christmas. And she had never encouraged the women to be
clean so the first thing I did, was get some material and make frocks for them.
I made them each two frocks. I knew if I made more than that, they would
just toss them around. Now I said, you put on a clean frock at night. You take
off the other one and you wash it. And then it’s ready for you to put on the
next night – the next day. And the one that they put on clean at night, they’d
work in the next day. So one day the two of the girls came down – the ones
that worked about the house, and the third one worked in the kitchen, and
Jemima had a dirty dress on and I knew she hadn’t had a bath by the smell.
And I said Jemima, you haven’t had a bath. Did have a bath. No, you haven’t
had a bath Jemima and you don’t have a clean dress on. Haven’t got a clean
dress. I said you should have a clean dress. If you had washed it last night, it
would be ready for tonight. Now you go back to your camp, you have a bath
and you put on a clean dress. As she turned away she said to the other one,
Queenie, how bin Mrs know I never bin have a bath? Because the smell was
enough without the dirty dress. Well she had curly hair – curly hair to about
here, and she came back in a few minutes and she was absolutely dripping
from her hair down. Her dress and everything. She put her dress through the
water. She got into the bath and she was just, just dripping. Well, I had to
laugh. That was the last time that Jemima arrived in a dirty dress and
unbathed. And the other funny one about the um I don’t know whether I
ought to tell you this one. You can cut it out perhaps. The cook – we had a
man cook when we first went there, and he had a poisoned hand and he had to
leave so I took over the cooking, and I found a slip of paper in the kitchen with
little stories of the woman that helped him in the kitchen. And he had told her
that she must call him Your Worship and she couldn’t say Your Worship, she
said Washup. So one day she was in the little dining room off the kitchen
doing the ironing and he heard her spitting and he called out Minnie, I told you
not to spit longa floor. She said not bin spit longa floor Washup. I bin spit
longa wall. If you want that one to stay, otherwise wipe it off.
Just one – this is the last question I’ll ask you about Ada and Elsie because I
understand you didn’t know them very well.
No.
Edith’s newsletter said that they followed she and her husband round the west.
Do you know anything about what happened to them? After that time you saw
Ada, did you ever see either Ada or Elsie again?
No. No. Elsie stayed – must’ve stayed at Durham because I heard that when
Jean, the little white girl, was having lessons from the governess, ah Ada –
Elsie also had lessons and then the McCullaghs were moved up – way up
north to Diamantena, on to the Diamantena River, and I remember Jean being
with them but I don’t remember Elsie coming with them. I don’t really know
what happened with her but when I saw Ada at Nockatunga, I didn’t see Elsie.
So I don’t really know. There was no relationship between them. I’m quite
sure of that. Ah because I think that ah Ada and Emily were probably
different tribes.
And coming now, and I won’t talk so much about Adelaide and Morestone
because they’re not really in the Channel Country.
No.
How did you come to come to Tanbar?
Because I heard that they were wanting a governess there and a friend, a friend
of a relative had been to Nappamerrie Station and they took her on a trip to
Durham, which was about a hundred miles or more north of ah of
Nappamerrie. And while they were, she discovered they wanted another
governess, because Miss New had been there and she had left. And when she
got back to Adelaide, she told ah this relative of ours where she’d been and
they were wanting a governess and the cousin said – thought of my sister first
but my sister was in Sydney with a kindergarten and so they told me about it
and I jumped at it. I said right, that’s just what I want to do, to get out into
that country and have a look at it.
I actually meant Tanbar. How did you – but although that was very good but
how did you come to come to Tanbar?
Well Tanbar – after we married um my husband had been sent up – I’d been
waiting for him to come down to Adelaide so we could be married in Adelaide
and he wired to say that the firm that – he was with Vesties at the time, the
firm had sent him up to this property north of Camooweal, and I said – I was
teaching at the time on the condition that I could leave at a moment’s notice,
but I got the telegram to say he was being – going straight up there. I thought
well they’ll never give him time to come down to Adelaide so we could be
married. And ah the little girl’s mother said well, what are you going to do
about it? She said you know, we had an agreement that you could leave at a
moment’s notice and I said oh, I’ll stay ‘til the end of the term. She said no,
no, no, no. Well, I said, I’ll stay ‘til the end of the month. So I stayed ‘til the
end of the month and then I took off by train all the way round the coast up to
Townsville and out to Cloncurry. Met him in Cloncurry and we were married
there and then straight out to this property north of Camooweal. Well it
wasn’t a wonderful position with Vesties. He couldn’t really do the things he
felt needed to be done. Everything came from the office. And he heard that
they were wanting a new manager on Tanbar which adjoins Durham. He’d
never been to Tanbar but he knew exactly where it was and he liked that
country. He liked the river country. So he applied for the position and he got
it, and so we set off – well he put in his resignation and we set off down the
back road near the border fence with a three months old baby to Tanbar.
What year?
That was in 1932 and Helen was three months old, and we left there in
November 1956 and we had over 20 years there. Just over 24 years we were
there. And that’s how we came to – back into that country again. That south-
west country again.
Can you tell me a little bit about that south-west country?
The which?
The, the south-west country. Tanbar. Durham. Why does water move so
slowly there?
Well it comes from the two rivers. The water in the Cooper comes from the
Barcoo which comes down through Isisford and the Thompson which comes
through Longreach, and they meet just above Windorah. Only a
comparatively few miles from Windorah. The two rivers meet and they form
the Cooper. Cooper’s Creek. That’s the old joke about the two rivers making
a creek. Well as far as I know, the Thompson and the Barcoo don’t flood out
very far, but from Windorah downwards, the Cooper floods out in a – in a
good flood it overflows the banks and it’ll – the most we saw was hundred –
one hundred miles of water from east to west. And because it’s a very slow –
low gradient, down to Lake Eyre, the water moves very slowly and instead of
just rushing down the river as it does from the mountains, it moved slowly and
it spread out across what we always call flooded ground. And that flooded
ground in dry seasons cracks and the longer it is dry, the wider the cracks and
they are quite deep. Well when the water begins to flood out, it sinks down
under and it comes up from the cracks which means it’s slowing up the growth
– the speed of the water all the time, and then as it comes up and it comes up
all these cracks, massive cracks in a long dry period, a horse could stumble
into a crack like that and break its leg. They’re so wide. And then the water
spreads out over all the flooded ground and there might be – after Windorah, it
breaks into different channels, and we had um we had one channel on the
north side of the house and three channels on the western – on the southern
side of the house. From one channel – way out there, the channel out this side
was somewhere in the vicinity of 50 or 60 miles – no 30 miles, 30 miles of
water. Thirty miles of water across there, and when that outside channel
flooded, and went further than usual and the northern channel went further
than usual, we had 60 miles of water from east to west – from north to south.
Yes, north to south.
So how was the – how is the flood regarded? You know, what would people
think about weather like that?
How do they manage?
No. What did people think about flood? Like was flood a natural disaster?
Well it, it’s in a way it might be a disaster, especially if you get drowning
stock and that sort of thing. In – in some of the country there, the sheep were
not fenced off from the river and once they got in, of course they were washed
out. The sheep were hopeless there. And by the way, I said north to south.
East to west. It was the east to west was 60 miles. Not north to south. It
came from the north. Um – but the thing is, that after that water goes, the feed
is magnificent. Magnificent for fattening country, fattening stock, fattening
sheep or cattle. And it will last for some months but it isn’t a permanent feed.
The permanent feed you got would be out on sandhills. Well at Tanbar in
particular, was sandhill country. Away from the river. And when we had
heavy rain, it brought on this wonderful feed which would last – dry, it would
become dry, but it was still nutritious.
How did you come to feel about that land Edith? Honestly.
07:45:26:02(?) Ah – I’ve got a very soft spot in my heart for it really. Um, I
know there is terrible disasters. Its terrible droughts. Terrible dust storms. In
a dry season the dust was heartbreaking but I still have no regrets about having
lived there. I wouldn’t want to go back to it. Sometimes I think I would like
to go back just to see Tanbar and then I think no, because I had a very
beautiful garden there. Lovely flower garden. And I put in trees and shrubs
and things. And I heard that – I did hear at one stage that it hadn’t been
looked after but I believe they are trying to restore it. But I just don’t know. I
think just a part of me has been left out there. I was there from 1925 ‘til 1956
- 31 years, living in that – most of the time in that country. I think it’s got to
take a part of you and I think you would find that with anybody that lives in
that country for a long time. There is something there that will always appeal.
You could live on the coast and you could see the changes on the coast and
you could go away and live somewhere else, but you would never have just
the same feeling. And then again, having grown up in that lovely garden that
my father had, not only the masses of fruit trees and grapevines but he had a
very beautiful flower garden. A big part of me is down there too. I think it’s
between those two places, that’s where my heart is.
And is the fact that you were – you and your husband were managers rather
than leasees or owners, did that – in any – did you ever feel oh I can’t put too
much of myself in here?
Never. No. Never felt that at all. Even with Vesties. When I went to that
awful house. I mean the house itself, the building itself was not too bad. It
certainly was just great big bush timber for posts this high – thick, you know?
Massive posts. And the top part was built on that with sawn timber. Yes,
sawn timber for the top part of the house. I don’t know when it was built but
um then the lower part underneath had been closed in to make a dining room
and a sitting room area and office. Ah – but the place itself, I’ll never forget,
the disgusting state it was in, and it took me weeks with the help of these three
women to get it anything like a home. No garden. Oh, a little bit of a
vegetable garden down on the flat near the water hole but no flower garden
and I must always have a flower garden. And the house was built on a
limestone hill. I think it was limestone anyway it was pretty hard stone. And
every time my husband was out of sight, I used to get to and dig out the, the
stone. Once I got the house cleaned up and painted um I painted the whole
thing inside and out until I ran out of um paint when I was halfway through the
last window frame to be done. And I was sitting up on the window sill and I
ran out of paint and I asked Vesties for some more paint and they said you’ve
had enough paint. You can’t have any more. Well I said, well it’s your house,
I said to myself. If you have visitors coming up and seeing half of the window
is painted. The other half if not. They might think it’s a bit funny but it’s not
my house. We’ll leave it. Well then I made the garden and I had round – little
round beds, and I grew flowers there and I improved the vegetable garden with
the help of the black boy that lived there and um I grew Iceland poppies and
we – I put some Iceland poppies on the breakfast and it happened some people
arrived there. Why they came there I don’t know because the road didn’t take
you anywhere else. It was just a dead end there. And so we invited them in to
come and have some breakfast with us. She walked in – oh, she said, you’ve
got artificial flowers –
End of Side A Tape 2
Side B Tape 2
On the table. I said they’re not artificial. I grew those.
What else were you going to tell me about gardens?
About the big ceremonial ground where they had the rainmaking ceremonies,
corroborees. Ah, I mentioned that in my book and there were photos of this
ground in that book. But it had not been used for a long time but you could
still see how they had laid it out in sections and at every corner of this – we’ll
call them rooms for the want of another word, the stone would be say this high
and pointed and it would’ve been pointed by the men themselve rubbing it
down with stones. They would’ve worked on it with stones. And in a cave
nearby, and some of the men found the cave but there was nothing in it of
importance, but in that cave the Rain God lived and when a drought came and
this would have happened way way back, long before white men ever lived
there, ah when a drought came, they would go out to this place and have a
corroboree and the Rain God would come apparently to the corroboree and
they would call for rain. And ah – I’m getting very hoarse. I’ve talked too
much. While I was there, there were no ceremonies taking place there but it
was so sacred to the men folk that the women must not go. They must never
see it. They must never speak of it. They must never see it a photo of it. And
not knowing this, I had taken photos and I had the prints and I said to Ada, oh
I took some photos at – I can’t remember the name of the place, and I held it
out. Oh, she said, no – no narcoo. No. No. No. I mustn’t look. Mustn’t
look. Shut her eyes. Turned away. She said don’t you tell Paddy I talk about
it. I said Ada, why can’t you look at it? Oh no, she said. No gin go out there.
No gin look at anything. Mustn’t talk about it. It was very sacred to the men.
That’s a story about kind of a cultural clash if you like. About one culture –
did you often have that feeling that you were –
That was the only time. That was the only time that anything like that
happened. Um – they were prepared to talk about other things and we could
go out gathering yams with them and do all sorts of things like that. We could
watch – certain corroborees we could watch, but as I was saying, there was
one corroboree I couldn’t watch until after the sun came up. Ah, they had a lot
of – a lot of secrets, which were never divulged and probably never have been.
Did you ever read Alice Duncan-Kemp’s books? And what did you make of
them?
No. No. I didn’t know about her having written a book. Um – Alice Kemp,
she was the mother, wasn’t she?
Laura Duncan was the mother. Alice Duncan –
Laura was the daughter.
There was a mother – Laura Duncan. One daughter – Laura Duncan. And
then another daughter Alice Duncan, who then married a Kemp and became
Duncan-Kemp.
Oh no, no. That – no I don’t think that’s right. I don’t want to argue about it
but when I was out in that country, I heard that the mother was – she had
married a Duncan and he died and she married a Kemp. But she had – and
after she married Kemp, she had – I thought she had the two daughters and
one was Laura because Laura, the Laura Duncan that I knew and met I think
once at Hammond Downs – not at Hammond Downs, at Mayfield, was a
woman of um oh probably middle-aged when I knew her, and her mother was
a much older woman and after Doug left Durham – you know, my husband,
not then my husband but he was Doug McFarlane – he went – was sent out to
a Kidman property to take charge as he thought but in typical Kidman fashion,
he was – it was a ring-in. He was to wait there ‘til the new manager came. So
when the new manager came, he left. And he had to have work somewhere
and he went to work at Mooraberrie with Mrs Duncan-Kemp and Laura who
was the young one – the younger one. Well I knew she had a sister but I
cannot recall the sister’s name, and I think the sister wrote a book and what
she called it – it might have been ‘Our Sand Hill Country’. That’s just come
to me. I think that was the name of her book. And that was Laura’s sister that
wrote that. And I had never heard that Laura married, but if she married, it
would probably have been the man who went there after – I think after Doug
there or he may have been there part of the time. His name was Arthur
Church.
They never married but they shared the house for a long time.
They shared the house. And, and the mother I think would have died um I
think she was still there when we left. When we left Tanbar I think she might
still have been around but um –
Did you ever hear the story of Laura Duncan, the mother, going – taking a
court case to the Privy Council?
No. I didn’t ever hear about that. Until it was – I think it’s mentioned on that
typewritten sheet you sent me. That was the first I ever knew about that.
And Edith, this is a – a different tack. But tell me about giving birth to your
second – your second and third children.
Well the second one was born in Adelaide. I went down about three months
before he was born and took him home when he was um a month or six weeks
old. And when number three was coming, number one was only 2 years and 3
months when he was born and number two was only just over 12 months.
There’s only 12 months between one and two. And I said now I can’t – I’m
not going to go away and leave you again like I had to before because if I
leave you alone here for 3 or 4 months, I’m not going to do that again. And
anyway, I couldn’t start off on a train journey from Quilpie to Brisbane and all
the way down the coast to Adelaide and there was nowhere in Brisbane I
wanted to go because I didn’t know anybody, so um I said I’m going to stop
here and I’ll have a double-certificated sister to come out so that was all
arranged and I kept very well. I kept very well with all of them, except with
number two and I had a shocking back ache. I couldn’t – I could hardly move.
And he was an 11 lb baby so probably that’s why. Anyway I kept very fit and
well and I went on working doing all the usual things and out in the garden
and everything else while I was waiting for number three to come, and when
the Sister arrived – by the time the Sister arrived I’d got a friend to come and
stay with me so that she could look after the children while I was in bed. She
was a friend I had made when I was at Durham. They lived – they lived next
door. Next door to Durham, and she was about my age. And I asked her if
she would come up and stay there until you know, look after the kids. So the
Sister arrived and she said which of you is pregnant? I said it’s very obvious I
think which is pregnant. Well, she said, you’re certainly not as far advanced
as you think. I said don’t you think so? I said this baby will be born in mid
September, in about two weeks time. Oh, she said, no. Colin arrived in two
weeks time. And things didn’t go very well really. He popped along fairly
quickly but I haemorrhaged very badly that time and um I think I could’ve
easily slipped away but I made up my mind I wasn’t going to. I said I’m not
leaving my babies. Three babies and a husband I worshipped and I said I am
NOT going to die, and kept thinking of my sister-in-law who had died when
her second baby was born. And ah this girl that had come to stay - would look
after the children, was sitting beside the bed and if I wanted a drink of water
I’d just go – and that’s the only movement I ever made. I was determined I
was going to come out of it. And the Sister was scared. I knew she thought I
wasn’t hearing anything but I know she was scared. She was a very devout
Catholic and she was praying madly that I would come out of it and afterwards
she –
did you ever –
Mmm.
Oh, go on. Sorry.
Afterwards, she said, you were scared. I said, yes I was, but so were you. Oh
no, she said, I knew you were alright. Years later I heard from one of the
Charleville Sisters that they – these two had worked together in the Repat and
she said, she used to tell me the most hair-raising tale about delivering a baby
out in the far west and she said, it never dawned on me before that it was
YOU!
What year was that?
That was in 1934. ’34. And no Flying Doctor at that time. Not down in
Charleville. We had no Flying Doctor there then.
So was there a doctor at all that you saw?
No, I didn’t see a doctor all through. The only doctor – the nearest doctor was
up at Jundah which was um about 130 miles away, and the doctors that go out
there – and I read the same thing in this book about Flynn, they were no-
hopers. They were drug addicts or addicted to alcohol, and I did have to go up
to Jundah once. I’d got a huge splinter in my hand. We had a new house and
the floorboards, hardwood floors, and some of them were splintering, and to
take up the splinters we used to oil the floors with linseed oil. I get down on
my knees and so this and I did this one and I just caught it on a splinter that I
hadn’t noticed and it drove from here right down to my wrist and I knew it
was a big one. That part of it was thin and part of it was thick, and I thought
I’m not going to get anybody to, to take that out. And Doug was out on the
run. When he came home I said I think I’ll have to go up to Jundah to the
doctor, and he said why and I showed him. Oh I’d put an antiflagistine(?)
poultice on it to sort of draw anything out. So the next day up we went. I took
Helen but I left the two boys with my home help and away we went up to
Jundah. A Sunday. I went to the hospital and the Matron said oh, the doctor’s
up at his house. Where have you come from? And I said 70 miles the other
side of Windorah. She sort of looked at me in a very peculiar fashion and she
said, what did you want? I said oh I have a splinter in my hand, I – and it was
bandaged and she couldn’t see it. She didn’t say anything then and she said
oh, the doctor’s up at his house. Well I went up to the doctor’s house and he
took my hand and he’s like this – and oh, what have I struck?
Drunk?
No, drugs. Drugs. And um oh, he said, oh he said I’ll be able to fix that.
We’ll go down to the hospital. So when we got to the hospital he said do you
want an anaesthetic and I said no. And the Sister, the Matron said would you
like a local? No. No. Oh, she said, I’ll hold your arm steady and stand
between you and the doctor so you can’t see what he’s doing. And I was
wondering what’s it going to be like? How is he going to manage this with his
hands were like this all the time? Well he made a little nick down here and
drew this splinter out and as Matron looked at it she said I thought you said it
was a splinter, and I wondered why you’d come so far to have that out, she
said. That’s huge. And it was. At the bottom end would’ve been um a
quarter of an inch across it. Well do you know, in spite of his shaking, that
little split he’d cut healed beautifully and wouldn’t think there’s a – there
never was a scar left I’m sure. I wouldn’t see it if it was now but I don’t think
there was ever a mark left.
Tell me about the Film Australia – (break in recording)